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The Perils of Comparative Thinking
“I wept because I had no Porsche, and then I saw a man who had no BMW.” That’s an ancient proverb, slightly doctored for modern American sensibilities. The point is that, regardless of our life circumstances, we derive our happiness and our disappointment from comparisons with others’ fortunes. Indeed, the human brain seems to be perversely wired for relative judgments, even when the comparisons sabotage our well-being. Is there any way to avoid the comparison trap? It should be obvious that my successes or failures in life have nothing to do with you, nor do your troubles or good fortunes reflect on me. How can we make meaningful and helpful comparisons, while avoiding maladaptive ones?
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We’ve Got to Have It Under Control
We love being in control. When we have power, we have control over what others do; when we have choice, we have control over what happens to us personally. A study published in Psychological Science found that when we have either power or choice, we don’t strive for the other as much, but when either source of control is lacking, we have a greater need for the other. In one experiment, volunteers who were asked to think about being in a powerless position favored the store that provided fifteen options of a desired product over a store with only three options. They were also willing to go to greater lengths (e.g.
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Taking Safety Personally
A year after the BP explosion and oil spill, those trying to find someone to blame are misguided, says psychological scientist E. Scott Geller, Alumni Distinguished professor at Virginia Tech, and author of a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Geller has spent much of his 42-year career developing interventions to keep people safe, particularly helping companies develop a culture that promotes occupational safety.
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El efecto ilusorio de los suplementos nutricionales
BBC Mundo: La mayoría de estos consumidores, tal como reveló un estudio en Estados Unidos, los toman porque "son buenos para la salud". Pero ahora una nueva investigación sobre estos productos -que incluyen uno o más ingredientes de vitaminas, minerales, hierbas o aminoácidos, solos o combinados- revela que éstos podrían estar causando más problemas que beneficios. Y no se trata de riesgos físicos directos, sino podrían estar provocando en el consumidor "una ilusión" de que se es invulnerable a los problemas de salud, afirma el doctor Wen-Bin Chiou, quien dirigió la investigación en la Universidad Nacional de Sun Yat-Sen, en Taiwán.
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Control Freaks: You’re Perfect Just The Way You Are
Forbes: Are women too controlling? A Google search returns over 20 million hits on the subject, many from men who feel that the answer is a resounding yes. But men aren’t the only ones pointing fingers. Here at ForbesWoman we’ve published pieces with titles like “Tame Your Inner Control Freak,” and a week doesn’t go by when I get self-help pitches meant to help women “learn to finally let go.” Read the whole story: Forbes
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Powerful women ‘will have affairs just like men’
The Telegraph: Both men and women in powerful positions were more likely to stray than their junior colleagues because they had high self–esteem, according to the research. Researchers at Tilburg University in Holland, led by Dr Joris Lammers, a psychologist, found that, contrary to popular perceptions, women with powerful jobs were just as likely to stray sexually as men. "There's been a lot of research indicating gender is the key factor but none of these studies have been done on powerful women," Dr Lammers said. Read the whole story: The Telegraph
